Review of Ouspensky’s POMPE /2008/08/17/review-of-ouspenskys-pompe/

Laying to rest the great lie of the Code of Manu, September 5, 2000
An old review of Ouspensky’s Psychology Of Man’s Possible Evolution

In this work Ouspensky perpetuates an historical confusion that vitiates his presentation of the so-called ‘Work’ and the ‘Fourth Way’ by injecting his obsessive concern with the antiquated law of caste and the Code of Manu.

The claims for the esotericism of the Work, derivative from Sufism, whatever their merits, are needlessly and quite egregiously burderned with this aura of the archaic Russian reactionary. Ouspensky’s almost de Maistrean viewpoint, so popular among oblivious liberal westerners lured into this esoteric hunger by its beguiling inuendoes, contains the absurd suggestion that spiritual esotericism condones and sanctifies one of the most oppressive exploitations in history. Check the history here, unvarnished, and the place of this thinking in the destruction of the Indian Buddhist world. The Code of Manu is an impostor, and springs from the post-Buddhist consolidation of the brahmins whose legacy was to make spiritual equality seem anomalous, when it was always fundamental. Such thinking emerging in the context of early twentieth century fascism was, and is, provocative in the extreme, and should be laid to rest.
What is surprising is the inability of many adherents of this so-called spiritual path to face the simple reality that the classic spiritual paths were and are more compatible with a basic democratic attitude than otherwise. The reason is desperately simple, these ways prosper better in an open society!
Never feel obligated to take this nonsense seriously.